Tenacity
Name: Tenacity Physical Age: 21 True Age: 249 Gender: Female Faction: Virtue Element: Air 'Power' Tenacity was blinded shortly before she died, and she had the hardest time trying to figure out how to get on with her life without falling off of a mountain or some such. Eventually she tried extending tendrils of air in various directions to find out how far away certain objects were. As her proficiency grew, she began to recognize shapes and she learned how to concentrate her tiny streams of air so that if she were to touch a living creature, it would likely feel nothing. She also learned that she could focus many streams of air in one area to gain a greater idea of detail, such as facial features. She is almost constantly using her power to 'see' in as many directions as she can. The more detail she focuses on in one area, the less detail she gets from other directions. She can reach about 10 gaits away, so it's kind of like being nearsighted, except that her 'sight' is clear up to the edge of the 10 gaits and any farther is completely invisible, rather than just getting progressively blurrier. It's better than the aforementioned 'falling off of a mountain' though. 'Weapon' Tenacity carries a long handled axe. The haft is simple wood and completely unadorned. The head is more decorated. A pattern of carvings covers the surface, starting with big broad lines and continuing into smaller and smaller ones. The carving is fairly complex in the smaller sections. Tenacity requested the axe be crafted as such because for her, it doubles as training for her power. She has long since grown proficient enough to sense all of the pattern, down to the smallest detail. 'Summon' Tyn is a blue salamander. Tenacity is actually a very friendly person, but she's cautious. She doesn't want any trouble with people she doesn't know anything about, since she can't even see them. Tyn doesn't have this problem. While Tenacity is busy trying to learn what she can about whoever she's dealing with, Tyn does most of the talking. She's just as cheerful as Tenacity ever is, and fairly vocal about it. She usually sits on Tenacity's shoulder. This is useful because she can tell Tenacity about who the two of them are approaching. If Tenacity knows them, Tyn tells her, so Tenacity doesn't seem rude for not recognizing them right away. It also makes her improvised sight seem more impressive than it actually is. While Tyn is the soul of helpfulness toward Tenacity, she also has a bit of a mischievous tendency. She would never lie to Tenacity where her master's sight or safety are concerned, but Tyn isn't above saying odd things that may or may not be true to people when Tenacity is busy learning about them. Tenacity is often too absorbed to catch Tyn's jokes, and many times they go uncorrected. It's become a bit of a game between the two of them to see if Tenacity will catch Tyn's jokes. 'History' Fiq was born in Kalmas and remained there for most of her life. Fiq's family was fairly respected in the town, and as all in Kalmas, they feared outsiders and bandits. The town's size meant that Fiq didn't have tons of people to pick and choose to be friends with as a child. When she was younger, she usually tagged along with her older brothers when she wasn't doing chores at home. Her brothers, Marro and Tevvan, sometimes picked on her as older brothers do, but there was little malice in it. Fiq was accounted strong and swift. She was as active and outdoor-inclined as any of the boys and more-so than some. This was slightly unusual, but not overly so. Her best friend was a boy named Ikeli, one year older than herself. They were seen in each others company during most of their free time. The adults of Kalmas often nodded to themselves knowingly, and Fiq and Ikeli's parents came to know each other well, certain that one day they would be one family bound together by marriage. Fiq wasn't thinking about that yet though. She just enjoyed Ikeli's company. She never thought about the fact that the two of them were different genders and their parents thought they would get married one day. If she thought about gender at all, it was to complain that her hair was long and in the way. Ikeli usually laughed and said that he liked her hair long. Somehow, that was enough reason for Fiq not to cut it. If nothing else, Fiq was a determined child of obstinate will, and had amazing self control for a child. She was usually rational, except where Ikeli was concerned. She knew on some level that one day she would marry him, but she stubbornly refused to acknowledge it, preferring to enjoy their simple companionship. As she grew. Fiq learned that she loved books. She liked histories and fiction, even business accounts. She would read whatever she could get her hands on. Because of this, her mother eventually decided that Fiq should be apprenticed to the main merchant in town. This merchant happened to be Ikeli's father, so she spent time with Ikeli more and more. Fiq was to learn to manage accounts, while Ikeli learned about travelling and selling his wares. The idea was to forge them into a formidable team that could share the family business when they inevitably married. Fiq didn't go out of town with Ikeli and his father when they were off trading. Nobody wanted to leave the town, and they especially didn't want a girl to leave with bandits running about. Better she stay behind safe walls. Except that was the worst possible thing they could have said to get Fiq to stay. She had never thought of herself as girlish and didn't choose to distinguish herself from the boys. Fiq would get sullen and angry whenever Ikeli got to go with his father. It meant that she had nothing to do, without being able to learn from Ikeli's father, and she envied her best friend for being able to go on what she was sure was an adventure. When Ikeli arrived home, she would be overjoyed. She would greet Ikeli at the gates and follow him home, begging for stories from the road. As they got older, and Ikeli at least showed some awareness of their burgeoning relationship, these meetings tugged at his heart. As usual, if Fiq noticed, she gave no sign. Things were different when he was leaving. She would always be in a bad mood for a couple days before he left, and complained at length about not being able to go with him. She would make him promise that when he ran the business and nobody could tell him what to do he would let her go with him. He would, to make her happy. Between the two of them, she was far more determined and stubborn. Before long, Fiq began to ask Ikeli to teach her what little of fighting his father had taught him during her rages before Ikeli went away. He was expected to be able to defend himself at least a little, and Fiq wanted to be able to as well. She was tall and strong, so she didn't know why she shouldn't be able to fight if she needed to. Ikeli couldn't deny her anything, and so he showed her what little he knew in secret. Fiq was usually not angry at any one person or thing about being left at home. She knew it wasn't Ikeli's fault and she didn't blame him, or even really his father, or her own parents. Sometimes she was angry at herself for being angry. Sometimes, she found herself angry at herself for being born a girl and resented most her hair, the most girlish thing about her. It was long and curly, and she could never keep it out of her way. At one point, while trying to train with Ikeli, she became so angry that she threatened to cut her hair. Ikeli managed to dissuade her. He liked her long hair. When Ikeli returned from his trip, he came with a present for Fiq. He gave it to her when they were alone. It was a long turquoise ribbon that he had spent much of his money on. He tied her hair for her and besides sleeping, she was almost never without it from then on. Older and more confident of himself at 18, Ikeli sometimes joked that if she married someone else she would have to stop wearing the ribbon because she shouldn't keep a gift from another man. She would reply that she supposed she would just have to marry Ikeli then because of his trickery. They would both laugh. The unspoken thing between them was not unspoken anymore, but it continued to be safe because it was behind a shield of humour. Eventually they married, as expected. Ikeli had yet to take over the family business, and would sometimes go on business trips with his father, leaving Fiq behind once more. They were a young couple, so the separation weighed on them more heavily than ever. When Fiq was 21, and Ikeli 22, Ikeli was to go on his first trip without his father. There were more tales of bandits about, but they had yet to attack anything very large like a trading wagon. Fiq persuaded Ikeli to let her accompany him. The trip progressed smoothly. It wasn't quite the adventure Fiq had thought it would be, but she was glad to have gone. They travelled back to Kalmas uneventfully. They would go on more trips that year, before the snows came. Their final trip began as uneventfully as all of the previous ones. The bandits even seemed to have been quieter lately. That would not last. Ikeli's death was not particularly dramatic. Not the event itself. He and Fiq had been in quiet conversation when he felt a sharp pain in his chest and fell off of the wagon. Fiq would never forget his look of surprise. She dove over the side of the wagon, still not sure what had happened. An arrow had pierced Ikeli's heart, and he gasped a few breaths before he expired, locking his eyes with Fiq's one last time. Fiq stood quickly to grab the first weapon she could find on the wagonbed. She picked up a spear and ran in the direction the arrow had come from. Four bandits advanced on her as well, and she tried to take out at least some of them, using the skills Ikeli had taught her. She cut one of them on the arm, but accomplished little else before the spear was taken away from her and she was captured. It was lucky for Fiq that the bandits were in a hurry, for the unfortunate fate that most women suffered at the hands of bandits did not come to pass. The man that she had cut crudely blinded her with a heated knife before the men had to leave, taking the wagon full of goods with them. Blood running from her ruined eyes, Fiq eventually crawled back to the body of Ikeli. Her keening filled the air until she passed into a stupor. When she awoke, she did not know what time it was, because to her, everything was dark, and would be forever. She thought about killing herself, but decided that she didn't want to do that. She had lost Ikeli, but she didn't want to just give up. It seemed so wrong. She would eventually gather her strength and drag Ikeli's corpse to the side of the road and arrange his limbs decorously as best she could by feel. Unable to see, she could do no more for him. She clung to life, hoping that if she kept walking where the ground was smooth, she'd stay on the road. By night she froze and by day she sweated. Her body was weak from shock and hunger. She had to forage in the woods, but without her sight, she couldn't tell if any plant even bore fruit until she touched it, and she couldn't identify what was or wasn't good to eat. Weak and desperate, ignorant of where she was or where she was going, Fiq began to eat what she could from the land. Sometimes what she ate made her sick, but she managed to survive for a while. Her wounded eyes showed no signs of infection, no doubt because the knife had been cleansed in a fire before it had been used on her. They even began to heal a bit. It was slow going, and her mind was clouded with pain. She just had to keep walking until she reached a place with people. Her strength gave out a few days later when she ate some suspicious berries. She hadn't known what they were, and they had happened to be mildly poisonous. With her body so weak, she couldn't fight off the sickness that they caused and she lapsed into unconsciousness, and soon died, as if to say that her struggles had been for nothing. She awoke as Tenacity some time later, and many miles away. She found herself healthy, but still sightless. If she could have wept, she might have. Her summon, Tyn, explained everything to her. Though she was now much stronger, and found that she could manipulate the air to some degree, she was at a loss. How was she supposed to get around without being able to see? She would be in the same predicament as she had been in just before her death. She would die again, unfulfilled. If not for Tyn, that might have been the case. Tyn served as Tenacity's eyes over the next weeks and months. The two of them wouldn't accept defeat. Tenacity could not be allowed to just give up on life. She wasn't done yet, and she'd fight against whatever odds she came up against. It took all of their combined ingenuity to develop a system that worked, for Tenacity to regain a semblance of sight, or at least awareness of her surroundings. Tenacity learned that with her tentative control over the air, she could extend tiny flows toward objects to see how far they went. It took years of practice to get it right. She could estimate distances enough to avoid walking into things, but it took some serious work to get her mind to form a picture from what she touched with the air. She spent a long time away from people, Tyn having told her of the disgust that appeared on people's faces when they saw her maimed eyes. Her old prejudice against outsiders was still strong too, and she wanted to get a better grasp on her powers before she went about socializing. Years later, (she had stopped keeping track) she had Tyn help her pick out a blindfold. She wanted the colour to match the ribbon that Ikeli had given her so long ago. She had an axe made with an elaborate pattern on the blade, so that she could train herself to pick out the smallest details. She took up residence in House Eternity for many years after that, but stayed away from the other Virtues when she could. She still found it hard to deal with people when she couldn't see them properly. She focused on her training until she could trace the pattern on the axe with tiny streams of air and form the picture of it in her mind. One could argue that was the hardest part, adapting her mind to understand what she was perceiving. She gained skill until one day, around her fiftieth anniversary of death, she thought that she could learn no more from just studying her axe and her surroundings, and she began speaking with other Virtues. A whole new world of troubles opened up before her, because even though she found that she could get a sense of what the other person's face looked like, she had trouble figuring out what expressions they were making. By this time, she had been sightless for about 60 years, and even when she had had her sight, she had never made observing the slightest changes in faces much of a practice. She came to rely on her hearing and of course, Tyn's guidance. She slowly learned to put her observations together with what Tyn and the other person's voice told her. She learned how to identify emotions on other people's faces, and piece together body language. At first, other Virtues were uncertain of her. She was blind, and had to concentrate so hard on her power (though they did not know what she was doing) that she often appeared absentminded and uncommunicative, though she had been the one to seek them out. Tyn was a great asset at this time. She not only helped Tenacity to learn other people's faces, but she kept the conversation going in Tenacity's place to avoid alienating people. Tenacity really did want to meet them and talk with them, but she had such trouble at first. She didn't make any lasting friends during this time. Many were kind to her, but that was as far as their friendship could go. It was a few years before Tenacity felt that she had learned all she could at House Eternity. All of the Virtues there made polite but firm excuses not to talk with her, knowing from experience that the conversation would be painful at best. She set out into the wide world, wondering at the adventure she would find. She did not realize it, but it was a similar feeling to what she had felt when she had set out on that first trading journey with Ikeli, some 75 years before. Even strong emotions can fade and be forgotten over time. Not that she had forgotten Ikeli. She would never do that, in all her long life. She refused to let that happen. She remembered, but she did not dwell. There was nothing she could have done. He had been many things to her, but she knew that he wouldn't want himself to be what drove her mad. His death had been a wound more grievous to her than the loss of her eyes, but she couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't have possibly found the bandits again, or avenged him. She was still blind, and though she had some rough idea of how to use her axe, she wouldn't have wanted to take on any serious enemies. She moved on, going from place to place, trying to meet as many people as she could and gain skill in interpreting expressions and body language. Some things were common to many people, but others had individual quirks that caused her difficulty. Though at first, Tenacity found that she had to study a person intently, if she met them a second time, she was much better at assessing them. Tyn helped with this as well, by confirming her guesses about people, but obviously not by speaking, since Tenacity was usually among humans. Reasonably pleased with her abilities, Tenacity realized that she should learn to use her axe in a fight. She returned to House Eternity, having been away for some 30 years or so, and met some old acquaintances, and a whole new generation of younger Virtues. The immortals who had known her before found her much changed. She no longer had to concentrate so hard, and conversation flowed with much greater ease. She was still an oddity, but she was not so tiresome as she had been. She submitted herself to training under more experienced Virtues that showed her how to use her axe properly. She grew skilled at an impressive rate, throwing herself into training as hard as she could, giving herself little respite. She was persistent and merciless with herself. Whenever she was at a disadvantage because of her lack of sight, she attacked the problem until she found a solution, determined to not let that hold her back. She would never be a great fighter. Her blindness prevented that. But she became passable, and even formidable if underestimated. She eventually headed off into the world once more. There were things that she wanted to do, that she had never gotten to do when she was alive, and had had trouble doing without sight. She returned for the war. She wouldn't ignore that. Knowing her limitations, she kept to the fringes, avoiding combat if she could, figuring that she would do better service to her goddess if she remained alive. With Purity's sacrifice, Tenacity departed once more. She wasn't sure what she felt, and much like her feelings, long ago for Ikeli, she thought that perhaps it was better not to think too hard about implications. With the news of the alliance, and some greater opponent looming, she has decided to return. She doesn't know what she'll do, but she'd like to help. If she knows nothing else, it's how to hang on to life, and move past obstacles in her way. She won't sit idly by as a new threat gathers its forces. 'Appearance' Tenacity has long flowing black hair down to the small of her back... that annoys her with its attempts at curling and generally getting in her way. She ties it back in a bright turquoise ribbon that she acquired when she was still alive. Her body would perhaps best be described as curvy. Perhaps most striking about Tenacity is her height. She's tall for a woman at an even 6'. Her height is her most noticeable trait until you get up close at least. She wears a thin strip of cloth across her eyes. She is blind, a wound that she sustained before her death. She used to go around without the cloth, but people found her eyes (or what remained of them) unsettling. Her blindfold is turquoise to match her hair ribbon. She usually wears a simple black dress without sleeves. It covers her to the neck but is snug against her body. She belts it at the waist and it falls to her knees. The belt is white. She wears stiff cloth boots that come up to mid-calf and turn down at the top. Her boots are also white. Purity only knows how she keeps them clean... 'Behaviour' Tenacity has developed some odd tendencies due to her lack of sight. Once, she acted very hesitantly, but she has overcome that. She will still stand at distances that may be considered uncommonly far for regular conversation. When she meets a new person, she listens to their voice intently and tries very hard to learn their facial expressions with her power. Because of this, she can occasionally seem a little absent minded when she first meets someone. After she has learned enough, she feels more comfortable about the other person's intentions and becomes a whole new, very cheerful person, who stands a little far away. Despite being blind, she is very sure of her actions because she is confident in her improvised sight. When Tenacity has a goal in mind, she won't give it up. That's why she's still alive. She lost her eyes, she figured out how to see without them. Even though it took decades. She doesn't always have a goal, though some of the ones that she takes on take vast amounts of time. When she does have a goal, she is relentless and persistent. Nothing will do until she has accomplished her goal, be it seeing without eyes, learning to fight with the axe from almost complete incompetence, or any other challenge she sets herself, she pursues it to all reasonable extents (and a few unreasonable). 'Other' Tenacity misses bring able to read. No application of her power can show her writing unless it is a carving. She also can't see colours, so when she buys clothing she relies on the kindness of others nearby, or her summon. Category:Characters Category:Virtues Category:Air